Solved File-type special icons reset after MS Essentials Uninstall

[ggh78]

Hey everybody,

Help needed here: A couple of days ago I tried installing the new Windows Live Messenger, which now turns out to be part of "Microsoft Live Essentials 2011" group of programs. Once installed, I decided I don't like the program's new interface (a chat program that is now trying to get a facebook style which is a horrible attitude from MS imo). Once un-installed, I discovered that every file type that had a specified symbol for it, like .pdf files have that red symbol, MS Word have that blue thing... all these are gone, and are now reset to the default Windows unknown file symbol. They still open by the way, with the right program (i.e. no "open with..."; Reader opens .pdf, Word opens .docx, etc.).

Please help me get things back... That's really annoying especially when I've done nothing special but just tried a new MS program. Other than that I haven't installed / un-installed anything else and didn't change anything with my system generally. I'm running a Windows 7 Home Edition 64bit OS.


Thanks in advance !

P.S. For what its worth, I chose to install only Messenger in the Essentials installation.

 

[Brink]

Hello ggh78,

Rebuilding the icon cache may be able to fix this for you.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[Airbot]

Try clearing you icon cache, and/or restoring the default file association for the ones with messed up icons. Hopefully that will fix the icon/s for them.

 

[ggh78]

Thanks guys.

Is this icon rebuild program something custom, or original ?

By the way any chance Windows will ever (in a few days) return to normal by itself ?

Thanks again.

 

[Brink]

ggh78,

The BAT file in Option One of the tutorial just automatically does the same thing that would normally be done manually in Option Two. It will only reset and clear the icon cache that is automatically rebuilt after restarting the computer.

The icons may or may not restore themselves, but resetting the icon cache will force them to reload.

 

[Airbot]

The icon cache is a just a basic Windows database file. All you're doing is deleting the iconcache.db file located in Computer/users/yourusername/appdata/local. Reboot and it gets recreated new again.

 

[ggh78]

I finally ran the program and did everything right. The missing icons aren't part of Windows' basics so that probably was the reason it didn't help. So far I've recognized the missing ones are of MS Office and Adobe Reader only for now.

For Reader it was easy to re-install. Though it would be a bit of a problem with Office as it came with my computer. I still don't see why, as a matter of principle, I should have this kind of problems with my PC upon messing with a Microsoft program (Windows Live Essentials). I'd recommend anyone to not try it, it's not worth it anyway practically as the menus and everything's totally changed and lost its simple and intuitive look (i.e. I've never seen a chat program where your contact list is just a little block on the upper right corner of a giant window with users' status and photo changes).

I guess once re-installing MS Office, the other icons should be restored as well. I tried to refresh the association of the file types with the Office programs, at no success though.

Thanks to anyone who helped. Highly appreciated.

 

[Brink]

GGh,

Yes, running the MS Office installation file again to do a repair install of it should restore them as well.

You might be able to do a repair install of MS Office though "Programs and Features" if you do not have the installation file. The MS Office entry (when selected) in Programs and Features may have a "Repair" option to use instead.

Hope this helps,
Shawn